Pastry shops, hotels and restaurants often sell cakes. Such cakes can be cut with a knife. However, aesthetics and portion control are very important for places that sell such cakes. Moreover, being able to cut your own cakes, instead of outsourcing the cutting from a cake supplier, allows the cakes to stay fresh longer. Generally, the longer a particular person has to cut cakes, the greater the chance for aesthetically unacceptable errors to occur. Two main problems are fatigue and inexperience which can result in misalignment of the cake prior to cutting, cutting the cake in uneven slices or at a bad angle. Any of these problems can make a cut cake unattractive.
Cakes can be cut in many different ways. For restaurants serving cakes, it is highly desirable that cakes be cut in a controlled and uniform manner. Cake markers can be used where a cake is marked and then cut with a knife into relatively even divided portions. However sometimes the person cutting the cake will slice the cake to one side or the other instead of at a desired cut angle at 90 degrees with respect to the cake. This usually happens when the person cutting the cakes starts to get tired from cutting too many cakes, loses attention or just does not have the experience to cut cakes uniformly.
Large high volume machines are available for cake cutting, but are typically priced beyond the reach of most pastry shops and restaurants. Devices suitable for smaller volumes include slicers deploying a plurality of knife blades and/or slicers using a wire. Both of these known designs have problems. Wire cutter designs often have difficulty cutting cakes uniformly down and then back up again. This can result in a partial tear or disruption of the cake. Multi-blade designs, while efficient, can also produce aesthetically unattractive cake slices.
Another known device for cutting cakes, especially round cakes, has the cake placed on a dial and then a retractable tray. The tray carrying the cake is then withdrawn into the machine where it is aligned with a blade which cuts the cake. The cake and tray may then be rotated about a center axis so that the blade can make another cut. This process can continue until a predetermined number of cuts has been made. Such machines work well if the cake is properly aligned prior to insertion into the machine. However, since the operator cannot see the cake being cut (since it is inside the machine when cut) he cannot tell if the cake is misaligned and therefore mis-cut until after the cutting process is complete. Inexperienced operators using such equipment may misalign the cake on the tray, and thereby make aesthetically unattractive cake slices. Such irregular cake slices typically cannot be sold to customers at full value. It would be desirable to provide a cake slicer of a cost affordable for a typical pastry shop, hotel or restaurant, which is easy to use and provides increased reliability and uniformity in cake slicing.